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What classes can this be used on?
Will it be able to be used with the new psychic coming this year?
Anyone that casts with a Spell Repertoire (So spontaneous casters). Psychics, in the playtest, have a spell repertoire so they'd qualify :)
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So... I'm having difficulty grasping the point of the wellspring mage. I mean, I want to like it, because it seems to be trying to give me something that I want (a way to make daily-slot casters less tied to daily slots) but...
- It costs you one slot per castable spell level and one cantrip. We're going to leave aside the oddities of the first few levels, and just focus on level 5 onwards. For non-wave casters, of your top three spell levels, you lose three spells. The first encounter you get into per day (assuming you haven't had a reason to spend spells before that), you have a 1 in 4 chance of randomly generating a surge that's at least as likely to hurt you as it is to help you, and a 3 in 4 chance of nothing, since you can't fill a slot you don't have empty. So... you make sure to burn one each of your top 3 in that fight so that you won't be caught like that again. Now, over the course of the next four encounters, you will recharge 3 times in 4, and surge once. So it looks like the numbers come out something like...
- The cantrip is effectively half a feat, and you need to spend a feat on the dedication.
- We're going to ignore the loss of slots below your top 3.
- Over the course of 5 encounters, you have 1.25 wellspring surges and... get back the top-three-level slots that you spent to unlock the thing. Except that you specifically have to spend one per fight, and it's generally random which one you get for which fight.
- You're further constrained by the need to burn through three reasonably powerful spells in the first encounter... lest it get worse.
- You start making a profit once you get to encounter #6? How many people have adventuring days that regularly include more than 5 meaningful rolls for initiative?
I'm honestly perplexed. How is this worth having? It seems like overall the Wellspring Surges are negative, and the archetype is a way to spend feats for the privilege of never quite making up for the up-front cost.
Admittedly, it does get somewhat better if you're a Summoner or a Magus, and also can usefully cast your first two spells for the day (your *only* two guaranteed spell slots for the day) prior to your first encounter (and also can suffer through levels 1 and 3 without major issue) but even there it seems like it's really not great.
So... what am I missing? People seem to talk like it's actually worth using sometimes, so I feel like I must be missing something.
I have an idea for a Wellspring Battle Oracle I want to play. I wish I could get this archetype on a wave caster/gish other than the summoner. It seems to be best suited for someone who doesn't need spell slots to be effective, but the ability to spend them freely since you might get them back is attractive.
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So... I'm having difficulty grasping the point of the wellspring mage. I mean, I want to like it, because it seems to be trying to give me something that I want (a way to make daily-slot casters less tied to daily slots) but...
No, that is the purpose of focus spells.
So... what am I missing? People seem to talk like it's actually worth using sometimes, so I feel like I must be missing something.
Wellspring Mage is just for the fun of it. Taking the archetype absolutely is less mechanically powerful than not having it.
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Well, there is a certain type of player personality where you are absolutely disinclined to use anything you could potentially run out of before you have the opportunity to get more. The same sort of ethos that gets people to save up all their megalixirs and not use them in the last battle makes people also not want to spend spell slots.
If your spent spell slots spontaneously come back sometimes in the middle of the day though, then using them feels less painful if you're that kind of player.
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Wellspring Mage is just for the fun of it. Taking the archetype absolutely is less mechanically powerful than not having it.
which is honestly pretty lame. There's no reason Paizo had to make these archetypes as weak as they did. It's a real let down, though unfortunately common in PF2.
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I don't really consider wellspring weak unless your dm is pretty stingy with giving combats that are harder than trivial. Constantly generating new slots of your top 3 levels is pretty amazing for a spontaneous caster. Usually, only the spell blending wizard gets that luxury. Also, the top two spell levels are the ones that really matter for damage and the wellspring mage can keep pumping them out. I guess it's not good for short adventuring days, but that's something to keep in mind before picking it.
I feel like temporary spell slots are the last thing I want out of Wellspring Mage. Like yeah, they're the option that gives you power in exchange for what you've given up, but the reason I want to take the archetype is 20-part table of random magic. Wellspring Control helps blunt some of the worst of the bad effects while Urgent Upwelling lets you generate more surges and on occasion pass them to the enemy. The part of the archetype that frustrates me is that the playstyle that leans into the wellsrping surges instead of the temporary spell slots is pretty heavily dependent on the GM. I wish the caster had the ability to direct where the surge was going/who it was affecting after learning what it did, rather than the only option to change details of the surge being the GM if the surge is granted by a powerful creature.
Well, the problem with Psychic specifically, is that they start with a single 1st level spell slot at level one, and don't get their second until level two. Which means when you would otherwise get a new spell level... you don't. You don't get that level of slot until a level later, which means your power budget is fried by a whole level and you're essentially 1 step behind other casters (even though your main focus, cantrips, are still fine. EXCEPT YOU HAVE ONE LESS!) and your slotted spells aren't that strong, so getting them back isn't actually the biggest of deals. Now, Psychics (as the OP asked about them specifically) can make good use out of the Surges, potentially better than other classes, because of the breadth of alternative target selection and self defense methods they have make the blowback less awful and the success as good or better than others can get from them. I'd still be hesitant to use it on them, but on an elemental or divine Sorcerer? Hilarious, 10/10 bucket of laughs
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which is honestly pretty lame. There's no reason Paizo had to make these archetypes as weak as they did. It's a real let down, though unfortunately common in PF2.
Wellspring Mage is just for the fun of it. Taking the archetype absolutely is less mechanically powerful than not having it.
It is a potentially disruptive style of character. It is probably for the best that it doesn't become the go-to option for powergamers. Even though it does also have the 'Rare' tag.
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I really wish you could get a temporary spell slot even if hadn't expended any spell slots, it makes the archetype so much more clunky. It's a temporary one anyways so I don't understand why you have to expend one before.
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It is a potentially disruptive style of character. It is probably for the best that it doesn't become the go-to option for powergamers. Even though it does also have the 'Rare' tag.which is honestly pretty lame. There's no reason Paizo had to make these archetypes as weak as they did. It's a real let down, though unfortunately common in PF2.
Wellspring Mage is just for the fun of it. Taking the archetype absolutely is less mechanically powerful than not having it.
If it was just wellspring mage that might make sense, but it isn't.
There's also frankly a lot of wiggle room between "optimal archetype" and "spend a feat to just be worse unless you min/max your spells and have a really long adventuring day"
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Surges are not all negative. Once you get Wellspring Control, you should be able to avoid most of the negative and even sometimes get a positive.
I also think this archetype is more for fun than for its mechanical efficiency, and I agree it's better that way as it's the kind of character decision that heavily impacts the party.
As a side note, Extinction Curse features a 14-encounter long adventuring day. So I think the archetype has a real use. Also, it's possible to use spell slots before the first fight, there are many interesting long duration spells (Mage Armor, Longstrider II and Circle of Protection IV, spells like Prying Eyes are useful before entering a dungeon, etc...).
I've made a quick count, there are 8 negative surges, 7 neutral (affecting you and the enemy equally) and 5 positive. With a reroll, you have 16% to get a negative one (and still the choice between 2 in most cases) and 44% chance to get a positive one. So, in my opinion, surges are not that bad once at level 4. But before level 4, this archetype is quite awful.
So... it sounds like there might be a niche for a "Wellspring Mage, but not quite as bad" archetype. Like, for starters, have the slot it recharges into be the "ghost slot" that got taken away initially, and then maybe not eating a cantrip for no reason. It would still be spending a bunch of feats for marginal gain, and you'd be losing control of which slots you cast when, but it wouldn't specifically punish the psychic in the same way, and it would on average break even (mostly) after a standard adventuring day of 4 encounters without having to find stuff to cast a bunch of spells on as soon as you wake up.
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So... it sounds like there might be a niche for a "Wellspring Mage, but not quite as bad" archetype. Like, for starters, have the slot it recharges into be the "ghost slot" that got taken away initially, and then maybe not eating a cantrip for no reason. It would still be spending a bunch of feats for marginal gain, and you'd be losing control of which slots you cast when, but it wouldn't specifically punish the psychic in the same way, and it would on average break even (mostly) after a standard adventuring day of 4 encounters without having to find stuff to cast a bunch of spells on as soon as you wake up.
I honestly think that you can end up with a too good Wellspring Mage if you improve it even slightly. It takes roughly 4 encounters to (mostly) empty my Sorcerer's spell list. So for him Wellspring Mage is already an easy way to extend it's adventuring capacity without losing much in terms of spell power.
And as I've said above, once you get Wellspring Control the Surges are no more that invalidating and many of them can be exploited (for example, 2 surges create difficult terrain, I've counted them as neutral but a party who capitalize on that can exploit them for a net gain).I also think Wellspring Mage changes strongly the way you play a caster. Most players tend to save on spells to avoid ending up with no more spells left. As a result, they very often go to rest with a few spells remaining. With a Wellspring Mage, you can (and should) use more spells as even if you empty your entire spell list you will have an available spell nearly every fight. So the loss of spell slots is less impactful than it looks.
I've seen a lot of hype around this archetype. As such I'd be cautious when improving it. You could too easily end up with an archetype that every spontaneous caster should take.
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So... it sounds like there might be a niche for a "Wellspring Mage, but not quite as bad" archetype. Like, for starters, have the slot it recharges into be the "ghost slot" that got taken away initially, and then maybe not eating a cantrip for no reason. It would still be spending a bunch of feats for marginal gain, and you'd be losing control of which slots you cast when, but it wouldn't specifically punish the psychic in the same way, and it would on average break even (mostly) after a standard adventuring day of 4 encounters without having to find stuff to cast a bunch of spells on as soon as you wake up.
This feels more like Wellspring Mage, but missing the point. It reinforces surging as a punishment to the character by focusing harder on the bonus spell slots as a reward for subjecting yourself to the surges. Wellspring Mage but better would encourage you to engage with the surges by having a surge table where each effect would be a benefit to you, but you didn't control what sort of benefit you got. The archetype is less disruptive because it doesn't have effects that are intended to penalize you and your allies. I don't think it needs to be more powerful personally, I agree with SuperBidi that it's fairly powerful as long as you buy into the play style it encourages where you are less concerned with saving your spell slots, but if it needs a power up anywhere it should be in the surge options and not the bonus spell slots.